Thursday, 12 April 2018

One of the real treats of attending the Kennington
Bioscope is not only watching films from Kevin Brownlow’s collection but also
hearing his introductions. As the noughties game used to have it, we’re all six
degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon but in Kennington we’re just three degrees through Kevin Brownlow to
so many silent film stars, cast and crew.

Kevin not only met William Beaudine, The Canadian’s director, he also helped put on a screening of the
film so that, having been too busy in the first instance, it’s director could finally
see it 44 years after its run. Ill health almost prevented Beaudine attending
and he wouldn’t give an introduction until the audience and he had a chance to
see it the film was actually any good… after applause during and after the
film, he got up on stage and announced his surprise that he wasn’t that bad
director, in patches at least.

The Canadian is indeed a decent movie and has many similarities
to Victor Sjöström’s later film The Wind
(1928) a film found in very good quality in the UK prompting one US archivist
to tell Kevin that they only had “the poor man’s Wind”… Whilst The Canadian
is not as good as that nor City Girl
(1928), another later film featuring a sea of wheat, it is a very good movie
and accompanied by Lillian Henley’s perfectly-paced piano – lots of lovely,
patient lines, so sure of tone - had more than one of this battle-hardened silent audience to
wipe salty fluid from their eye: we’ve coped with Chaplin, Stella Dallas, Joan of Arc… but then this!?

Beaudine had been primarily a comedy director and, seeing
out his contract to MGM as a lucrative loanee with Paramount, he took a chance and
took the all expenses trip up to Canada to make a drama based on a 1913 play, The Land of Promise, by W. Somerset
Maugham of all people. He was accompanied by cinematographer Alvin Wyckoff who
ended up being assisted by a curious electrician, Stanley Cortez, who stayed up
all night studying the cameras hoping to find a more better role. He ended up
as Orson Wells cinematographer on The
Magnificent Ambersons (1942).

See, from Kevin Brownlow to Orson Wells in three moves!

Nora Marsh (Mona Palma, who bears a passing resemblance
to City Girl’s Mary Duncan…) has had
to leave the “culture and poverty” of Britain (and this in 1926!!) following
the death of her aunt. She travels way out west to stay with her brother Ed (Wyndham
Standing) and his wife Gertie (Dale Fuller, who has a face you never forget and
was so good in von Stroheim’s Greed).

Nora’s no explorer and quickly finds both the locale and
the locals distasteful. She’s full of airs and graces and appalled by the rough
and ready approach to dining; eating with a fork and no napkins. Chief amongst
the louts is Frank Taylor (mighty Thomas Meighan) who is as incredulous as she
at each other’s startling incompatibility.

But it’s not Frank Nora needs to worry about, at least
not yet, Gertie’s a reasonable girl but when she finds her sister in law not
only knows literally nothing about housework but continues to lord it over her
and the men, she cracks and picks a fight Nora can only loose.

Thus it is, slightly improbably, that after being forced
into the most humiliating of apologies, Nora offers her desperate hands in marriage
to Frank who had previously said that he only wanted a woman to cook and clean.
The two are wed in cold contractual misery and then face life together in a
cold, tiny wooden shack that makes Lars Hanson’s gaff in The Wind look
positively palatial.

There a thousand tiny terrors start to unfold including
the issue of marital intimacy… like a gent Frank sleeps in the main room
leaving Mona the bedroom. But, the pressure builds, and things are about to get
a lot more intense.

The Canadian
deserves its own reputation and both leads excel. I knew what to expect from Mr
Thomas Meighan, but Mona Palma was also very good – pride just about trumping
fear until she learns to adapt.

There’s also a nice turn from Charles Winninger as Pop
Tyson who dances a mean jig!

Up first was an eclectic and satisfying mix of shorts the
best of which was It’s A Gift (1923)
which featured Snub Pollard in a small metal car propelled by his use of a
giant magnet to follow other vehicles; it’s an iconic image and now I know which
film it was from! Snub plays a scientist who has an automated breakfast and
wake up routine similar to Wallace in The
Wrong Trousers: we’d all like to pull a few strings to get our breakfast
made and trousers hitched.

The gifted Mr Pollard

There was also an oddity called Life’s Staircase (1915) featuring a couple reading and ripping up
old love letters, she ranged left and he, right, as the circumstances of each letter
and token place alongside, double-exposed. It’s about marriage and the
prototype relationships we leave behind, and it reminded me of Scott Pilgrim vs The World in which our
hero must battle all his girl’s previous partners. In this film he’d only have
to get married and they’d all fade away.

First film was a dreamy confection from Louis Feuillade all
about Spring (1909) which featured
lots of women dancing in flowing white dresses. It was impressive, but I was
concerned about the safety of the numerous doves held aloft during the calisthenics.

My garden, today

If you like ladies in swimming costumes, an episode of
the long running women’s cinemagazine, Eve’s
Film Review, was about to explore how “Eve’s” swimming costume has shrunk
since the 1880’s. There was definitely a trend on the evidence presented and
cause for concern for some but boy, were they in for a shock twenty year’s
later.

Felix the Cat started life in Eve’s Film Review and he
popped up trying to win a battle with a clown for the hand of a doll in Toy Land.
Itchy won (or was it Scratchy?) and the romance between paper cat and human
doll went to plan but oh, Mr Hays were you not watching?!

Meg Morley matched these broad themes with an assured eclecticism
of her own: if you can accompany cartoon cats, Doves in danger, Snubb’s auto
race and swimming-costumed women washing elephants in Manchester zoo, then you
can probably cope with anything.

Another superb evening at the one and only Kennington
Bioscope c/o The Cinema Museum! Thanks to Lillian and Meg for playing, Michelle
Facey (the shorts: meticulous research as usual!) and Kevin Brownlow (his film!)
for introducing, Dave Locke for projecting and to everyone who keeps this special place going.

PS For Ladies Only? Eve's Film Review: Pathe Cinemagazine 1921-33 by Jenny Hammerton looks fascinating and is available on Amazon!